#lin chi

I’ve mentioned it a few times on this blog before that one of the reasons I dig Baiken is her numerous associations with Buddhism. While Baiken probably isn’t the best Buddhist – she does spend a lot of her time stabbing people with a sword and she has been known to drink a fair amount from time to time but lots of parts of her character are Buddhist or have Buddhist allusions. While not being a…

"Guy who's sad because the woman he loved died" has been done to death a thousand times in a thousand different ways, but god in my heart it's never been done quite like Lin Chi. Even in the same novel, Wen Fei has a similar backstory, and he can't even begin to compare. The sections about Lin Chi and Hui Xiangjun fuck me up so bad.

It's "guy mourning his unrequited(?) crush," but it's also "incredibly lonely guy mourning his only friend," and it's also "creative mourning the master craftswoman he was was endlessly inspired by," and it's also "guy with incredibly low self esteem mourning the one person who truly understood and encouraged him."

The way the passages about them are written are just. christ.

Xi Ping going, "Hey, I need you to do shit for me that should logically take a couple of years to complete, but I need it, like, yesterday, or the world is going kaboom" forced Lin Chi to not only come out of seclusion, but also pick up his forging tools again, fire up that old flame, and get to inventing. And boy did he not disappoint! 

He goes back to doing the thing he used to be passionate about, he becomes better at it!, he challenges himself, even his friendship with Zhi Xiu and Wen Fei is basically a result of Xi Ping giving them a reason to start a "Xi Shiyong is a devil and a rat in a human body" knitting circle. 

And he needs it. 

The enough-to-last-for-ten-years fireworks? Inspired. 

The shapeshifting tool that gets Xi Ping turned into an actual rat? Probably the very last time Lin Chi invented a contraption without an idot-proof failsafe in place. 

Long time no Tai Sui doodles!